Saturday, 14 March 2026

LIST 245 - 14/03/2026 (Feature Fest #1)

Hello again,

This week's List finds your writer still with ringing ears and a happy heart from witnessing the Manchester leg of Cardiacs' emotional and triumphant return, with erstwhile Oceansizer Mike Vennart permanently installed in the live set-up now as well as on record.  

The Albert Hall's variable sound quality - partly the consequence, I'm given to understand, of its many windows, beautiful as they are - couldn't prevent the magic of this strange, beautiful, sometimes manic music shining through, and it's worth stressing that compiling and executing this near two-hour set so perfectly was no small undertaking, even for those who'd performed some of its contents for decades previously.  

These are still earlyish days for drummer Bob Leith performing without any of the backing tracks which the late Tim Smith had introduced upon the band's early-1990s conversion to a power quartet, and had kept in place as the live ensemble expanded and right up until the tragic events of 2008.  Live keyboards hadn't featured in Cardiacs' live offer for at least 35 years, either, until Rhodri Marsden was brought on board; something else for Bob, Kavus Torabi and Jim Smith to get used to.

Inevitably, though, it was Vennart who has carried the greatest responsibility to make things work as the band's de facto frontperson now, to all intents and purposes the Tim of the piece however much he has striven to play down that perception.

Has he succeeded? Kavus's succinct summary on Facebook yesterday morning that, "Mike has excelled, taking on the almost impossible task of inhabiting these songs with authenticity and passion, not to mention extraordinary ability and talent", tells you enough.

This was not the Mike Vennart show, neither was it Mike doing Tim Smith cabaret - no replication of any of Tim's eccentric outbursts, nor any of the theatrical humiliating of Jim (indeed, Jim got a cuddle or two from Mike and Kavus). Instead, generous tributes to his fellow players and audience during the set, culminating in the outro of The Whole World Window, which rounded off the main set. Flowers thrown from the stage (a nod to the Consultant, one assumes - IYKYK), and respectful hug of a picture of Tim Smith himself.

The octet on stage looked absolutely spent by the time Is This The Life? drew the second and final encore to a close, Mike and Jim especially. The latter had, some will remember, been unable to complete the final Sing to Tim gig in late 2024 due to illness, but it was emotional investment rather than physical frailty at play here.

By the end of this week Cardiacs will have played four equally long gigs within five nights, and the time required to rest, recover and reflect will be well earned.

Jim has often mentioned that it felt as if Cardiacs were on the cusp of something approaching a crossover, relatively speaking, back in 2007 judged on the size and increasingly varying age profile of their audiences; and the evidence of the rapturous responses to these sell-out dates is that those people have not only waited and returned, but been appreciably added to in number.

The question for Jim Smith to consider, at leisure, will be what happens next.

There are supposedly further remnants of music and lyrics from Tim's archives which could yet be spun into gold in the same way as the LSD album and ultimately performed live.

Equally, and even factoring in the performances of all three tracks on the Ditzy Scene single this week and/or in 2007-8, exactly half of LSD will have remained unplayed to a live audience by the end of this current tour.  That includes such audacious tracks as Busty Beez and Skating - taking these on the road some day must have its appeal.

And, of course, there is a back catalogue of such depth that a staggering number of setlist permutations could still be drawn up for years to come, with or without contributions from LSD, and the faithful would likely still be more than satisfied with that.

All in good time. More immediately, I know that Thursday night's concert definitely finds a place among my all-time favourites. I just need to decide where.

**** 

In the circumstances, there was never the remotest chance that this week's List would pass without a Cardiacs contribution, and the aforementioned Busty Beez is included in the No Language In Our Lungs feature.  

Calling it my favourite Cardiacs instrumental would be damning it with faint praise, as they've not done all that many relative to the size of their overall recorded output (true to the ethos of this particular feature).  

Calling it one of my favourite ever instrumentals of any description, however, is no exaggeration, so quickly and indelibly has it got its claws in me still only six months after release.  A persistent, writhing, dramatic maelstrom of guitars and Craig Fortnam's brass arrangements, it reveals further details and secrets with every listen.  It's incredible.

The more attentive among you will have spotted the Feature Fest suffix to this week's header, and sure enough, every single track in this List belongs to one of the features I've introduced or reintroduced since That Music List was reactivated in January.  

I maintain a portfolio of 25 different features covering as many different eras and genres as possible, and no fewer than 20 make an appearance this week, three of which for the first time.  With that, I'm pleased to say that every single feature has not only appeared at least once now, but has received some degree of coverage here within the past three weeks.  I just need to keep all these plates spinning now.

Of the newbies, I Love Pop Music And I Will Fight You is the only feature to have been thought up since this blog's relaunch, initially inspired by a quip from my friend and former boss Simon Rowlands as to when Taylor Swift might be making an appearance.  In truth, if Taylor Swift released a track I liked enough to include on a List, I would do so, and would do so unironically.

Until that eventuality, this feature includes other (mostly mass market) pop songs I do love unironically.  Good pop is good pop, wheresoever it comes from, and for whosoever it might be intended.  

I still recall most fondly the Strange Fruit indiepop nights that my brother and I would attend at Highbury Garage a quarter of a century ago, in which the occasional bit of S Club 7 or 5ive would nestle seamlessly among the perhaps more expected bill of fare, and be heard and danced to equally appreciatively.  

As guiding principles go, that has remained with me longer than most.  It also broadly informs the approach of our good friends Kev Birchall and Linda Yarwood, curators of Recordsville club evenings, organisers of the Pop at the Lock and Going up the Country indiepop alldayers, and tour DJs for the likes of Saint Etienne and Teenage Fanclub (all well as for our wedding reception).

All of this is probably too long a way of saying that whilst the initial choice for this feature is the bang up to date and commensurately cool pop of Hemlocke Springs, don't lose your mind if I decide it'll be turn of the century Kylie or even older Bananarama next time. My prerogative.

It's also my prerogative not to be in the habit of marking musicians' birthdays in That Music List, for if I started doing that I'd never stop.  However, having cued up Nena for inclusion in the latest instalment of my German language music feature, I've since remembered she turns 66 in ten days' time.

I hope it doesn't disappoint too many of you to learn that I was never going to use up a List slot on 99 Luftballons.  It's already sufficiently ubiquitous, and Nena Kerner has had a rather more rounded career and existence than the one monster hit and the ridiculous hysteria over her armpit hair that her fame amounted to in Britain.

Almost twenty studio albums for grown-ups, a handful more for children, TV and film work, mentoring and coaching on music contests, an autobiography, philanthropy, campaigning, and the setting up of a Sudbury model-type school.

A grandmother many times over she may be, but she's got no intention of retiring quietly, or as she puts it in my selection here, stopping being a Professional Teenager, any time soon.

A Loved Album this week probably ought to be re-dubbed An Album Loved By Almost Nobody Else Apart From Me, as I'm yet to find anybody else prepared to give Alright on Top by Luke Slater much in the way of credit.  

Perhaps it was just too different from what had been Slater's stock in trade prior to that, still techno at its core but more, as Slater himself described it, "an album of songs".  Perhaps the contributions from Ricky Barrow, former vocalist of The Aloof, were just too polarising - often deadpan where some might have preferred soaring, to offer a more striking juxtaposition between music and voice.  I'm guessing on both fronts, I freely admit.

It was a collaborative exercise never repeated, and there can't be too many other items in Slater's body of work that you can pick up online for a quid, so moderate is its apparent standing.  For all that, however, there wouldn't be many other releases from 2002 which I played as much at the time, still play as much now, and mostly know off by heart.  Work that one out.

Much else to enjoy this week, including but far from limited to:
  • In another new feature, Wir Sind die neuen Götter, Die Krupps pummel their way through one of the many such tracks that soundtracked my EDM / industrial / darkwave club night visits whilst living in Germany exactly three decades ago,
  • In the final new feature, Yes, They Did Other Songs As Well, we have something from Candy Flip that isn't a certain notorious cover version,
  • U2 in clearing a U2 sample shocker!  The peerless Tom Ewing has written fondly of Kiss AMC's almost DIY level enthusiasm winning out over actual rapping technique in this track, and it absolutely won't be the last time you'll see me endorse his every word of an opinion on these pages,
  • Three charts entries from this date in 1993, one of which you still hear rather more up to the present day than you do the others,
  • A theme tune which might just have been the stuff of Lucozade-quaffing, off from school with sickness-induced fever dreams for some of you (Structures Sonores Lasry-Baschet),
  • The forgotten (by some) '80s sound of sophisti-pop Mancs The Bernhardts, comprising one-third former John Cooper Clarke and Pauline Murray co-producer and two-thirds future Distant Cousins (whom we'll also catch up with on here one day),
  • Another perfect example of the Sabadell Sound Italo Disco archetype.  Spanish performer with an English stage name (David Lyme, or Jordi Cubino Bermejo to his mum)?  Check.  Long intro?  Check.  Me loving it to bits?  Check,
  • To finish, the sort of pneumatic, irreverent Happy Hardcore cover which will never not remind me of Peel and his enthusiasm for the genre (DJ Kaos).  Chicago ballads were never so tolerable...

J xx


Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 13/03/2026).

I LOVE POP MUSIC AND I WILL FIGHT YOU

DOCH DER COUNTDOWN LÄUFT


A LOVED ALBUM: Luke Slater - Alright on Top (2002)



GOODIER BEFORE WHILEY & LAMACQ


THEN AND NOW: Howling Bells



IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE

COMPILED BY CHET & BEE (AND SOMETIMES TIM)

EUROTASTIC

NO LANGUAGE IN OUR LUNGS

MY FORGOTTEN 80s IS MORE FORGOTTEN THAN YOUR FORGOTTEN 80s

I WAS AN ARMCHAIR RAVER




WIR SIND DIE NEUEN GÖTTER


A LOVED ALBUM: Luke Slater - Alright on Top (2002)



YES, THEY DID OTHER SONGS AS WELL

RAPPING SONGS

DANCE HALL AT PEEL ACRES

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Saturday, 7 March 2026

LIST 244 - 07/03/2026

Hello again,

“I don’t know who needs to hear this”, wrote one John Girgus in an open Facebook post in April 2022, “but Sarah Records is over. 

"It’s cool to remember and appreciate the music, but to go on like it’s still a relevant, active label and that the artists are still somehow a music scene, we kind of had that chance 20-25 years ago. 

"[…] Now I watch the same people try to start the whole thing up again after decades, every few years. Maybe I can offer some helpful advice from my experience: It's not going to happen. Let it go”.

Those far more familiar with the original poster than I might regard that statement as projection.  

A co-founder of late period Sarah act Aberdeen, whose post-Sarah existence ran for a further decade and even took in an appearance in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Girgus remains the curator of Aberdeen's back catalogue to this day, but appears to have found himself increasingly ostracised from former band members and the wider indiepop cognoscenti.  

That may be on account of his mutually incompatible political views, or not.  Others are better placed to pronounce on that than me.  Nonetheless, perhaps it's actually less a case of Sarah being over, more just John's Sarah. 

Either way, and even without considering that being relevant and being a scene aren’t necessarily one and the same thing, there has never been a point in the 31 years and counting since Sarah closed that a claim of “it’s over” would have withstood maximum scrutiny.

There have been quieter periods, sure, as is only to be expected when the vicissitudes of life, death, growing up, starting families, changing careers and the rest of it necessarily intervene.  But sustained silence?  No.

Think Shinkansen Records forming from the ashes of Sarah within a year, taking East River Pipe, Blueboy, Dickon Edwards, Harvey Williams and Bobby Wratten with it.

Think Heavenly releasing another corking album in 1996 before tragic events close to home enforced a hiatus.

Think Secret Shine whacking out three albums in five years at the start of the new century, and recording and touring to this day.

Think The Orchids’ perpetual victory lap as indiepop’s favourite cuddly, socially conscious, tipsy uncles.

Think the aforementioned Heavenly’s transformations into Marine Research, then Tender Trap, then Catenary Wires.

Think the Sarah tour which brought Even As We Speak and Boyracer back to these shores, and Action Painting! out of cold storage.

Think the My Secret World film and exhibition.

Think The Hit Parade’s relative stardom in the Far East.

Think St Christopher never really stopping.

Think The Sweetest Ache's lowish key but much appreciated return to the live fold (next to be seen supporting Even As We Speak in Swansea on Sunday 15th, folks).

Think two dedicated books. 

Think Jane Duffus’s glossy fanzines.

Think Nick Godfrey’s tireless efforts to license and sell Sarah (and other) bands' radio sessions as beautiful physical artefacts.

Think of all of the other Sarah or Sarah-adjacent projects my rapid brainstorm will inevitably have missed.

If the accuracy of a Sarah-is-dead pronouncement was already moot in 2022, it's been soundly debunked by a particularly productive last four years of alumni activity. Lightning in a Twilight Hour, Heavenly and related have already been touched upon since That Music List returned. Today it’s the turn of Blueboy.

Although blessed with the propensity to vary their sound and subject matter as much as stablemates The Field Mice, Blueboy’s eclecticism in three and a half decades’ worth of output seems to have been overlooked in comparison.

Perhaps Blueboy have wanted for a lack of the same compelling, interwoven narrative of boiling sexual fury between band members. Perhaps, as well as or instead, some of the styles attempted just haven’t had the same measure of cool of Bobby Wratten and co.’s choices (the Loops, the New Orders, and so on).


In giving Blueboy the A Session Of Sorts treatment here, I was very conscious of putting right that latter detail in particular.

Hence the absence of the obvious go-to fuzzed-up indiepop singles such as Loveblind and Popkiss.

Hence, instead, a track – taken from last year’s appropriately varied comeback album A Life In Numbers – which will surely delight anyone who regards 1989-1992 as Lush’s imperial phase (your writer raises his hand); the almost sophisti-pop opener to the Bank of England album from the band’s Cath Close-fronted period (which would also beget the bossa nova stylings of side project Beaumont); and the late Keith Girdler sounding to the manner born as a Neil Tennant-alike electronic pop vocalist on the magical Sarah b-side Hit.

It was interesting to read in a recent online interview with Paul Stewart and Gemma Malley how powerful a live proposition they believed Blueboy had become as the early-mid 1990s progressed, and the Bikini live EP of tracks performed in concert in Toulouse in 1994 - from which I have included Sea Horses - backs up their assertion most compellingly. 

It also serves as a welcome reminder of Keith’s often delicious sense of humour – “Steven is writing / Steven is writhing” and “There’s more to me than you think”. At least, I'd assumed these to be humourous; though certain other interpretations found online suggest the latter to be a more straightforward desire to be understood beyond a superficial immediate impression.  Regardless, Keith's lyrics, and Keith himself, remain much missed.

The good news for lovers of the Bikini EP is that the Aquavinyle label which released it has resurrected itself after decades of inactivity, and will release the Toulouse concert in its entirety on a white vinyl longplayer entitled Jimmy on the 20th of this month. If the abnormally good sound quality of the EP translates across the entire album, it should be outstanding. No checking online setlist aggregators to see what’s on it, though. That’s cheating.

Mentioned further up the page, Even As We Speak get their first airing this week since TML came back, as a means by which to launch another new semi-regular feature - Goodier Before Whiley and Lamacq, where "before" has a double meaning.

We all have our own favourite presenters of or entry points to particular longstanding programmes, both on TV or radio; and whether it’s a popular view or not, my favourite era of listening to the Evening Session on Radio 1 was when Mark Goodier was at the helm.

Guileless is not a word often thrown around as a compliment, but I absolutely mean it as one when considering Goodier’s choices for the show between 1990 and 1993.  I assume they were mainly his, that is, considering he and successors Jo Whiley and Steve Lamacq shared a producer in Jeff Smith (at least initially; Smith would ascend far loftier heights from 1994).

The more cynical cool of the latter duo was simply absent from Goodier’s puppy dog enthusiastic delivery and his record box before them, and there were things he played that, had Whiley and Lamacq already been installed, I believe would never have got a look in.

Industrial acts such as KMFDM or Skyscraper. The almost novelty dance of Nu-Tek. A genuinely fantastic ragga-tinged skronk from the by then commercially busted flush Adamski. The slow pummelling of Mad Cow Disease. The stop-start hardcore of John & Julie. And, on occasion, acts from a Sarah Records label whose status as pariah among the music inkies and many of those broadcasters who also wrote for them was virtually irreversible by then (I'm not minded to pretend that Whiley and Lamacq’s subsequent endorsement of Action Painting!’s Mustard Gas was predicated on much beyond its shared musical DNA with the New Wave of New Wave movement du jour).

I have never seen track listings published anywhere for 1990s Evening Session shows in the same way as they have been for John Peel shows, but for those of us who remember the time it’s difficult to overstate how much Goodier loved Falling Down the Stairs by Even As We Speak. Properly went for it. Played on every show for at least a week went for it.

I have no idea whether the band or Sarah Records were enamoured with his suggestion that they should get a bigger label to license the song and score them a major hit, but it came from a well-meaning place; and for someone, anyone, that much to the fore of new music broadcasting at the time to be as kindly disposed to any Sarah output was as noteworthy as it was rare.

Hmmm, that's 1,300 words about a label that's apparently over.  I can't be doing this right.

Just to finish on Whiley and Lamacq before moving on.  You're not going to find (m)any of their most commonly endorsed Britpop era acts on TML, and having already prattled on for so long this week I won't go deeply into the nuts and bolts of why.  Suffice it to say that my views on the whole Britpop era align far more closely with those of the likes of the late Neil Kulkarni (if without the sexually aggressive swearing) than ever they have those two broadcasters, and ever will.

Enough about the recent proliferation of Britpop retrospective radio and stage shows, thirtieth anniversary releases of "key" albums of the time, etc. has rather driven home the point to me that history is generally written, and indeed sometimes revised, by the victors.  

And I do mean revised.  Tracks from Elastica's 1995 self-titled debut album, as released on Lamacq's own Deceptive label, still command regular plays on BBC Radio 6 Music out of all proportion with its actual merits.  To this pair of ears, current Dry Cleaning tracks such as Cruise Ship Designer get way closer to distilling the abstruse, angular, oddball essence of early Wire than Elastic ever managed.

More pertinent to this week's List selections, I reminded myself that in mourning the passing of Food Records co-founder Andy Ross a few years back, Lamacq incorrectly opined on air that it was Ross "who'd discovered Shampoo".  

That must have come as news to the Manic Street Preachers, who featured Jacqui Blake and Carrie Askew on the 1992 promo video for Little Baby Nothing; or else to Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs of Saint Etienne, who signed the duo to their boutique label Icerink in 1993 and put out their opening two singles some time before Food came calling.  The first of those is included in this week's List.

Do I give him the benefit of the doubt and presume he actually meant "signed" rather than "discovered", to stop me giving myself even more paroxysms into old age over such matters (to add to those from older chestnuts such as the misappropriation of "indie")?

Much else to enjoy this week, including:

  • Immaculate New Order-on-a-budget stylings from early Elefant Records heroes Family (I'm pretty sure this is a particular favourite of that Pete Green out of Pink Opaque, but apologies if not, Pete),
  • My first Armchair Raver selection (T99), by no means the only track you'll be hearing from Olivier Abbeloos in the near future,
  • Something so authentically sinister from Belbury Poly that you'd swear it was lifted directly from the soundtrack of some Tom Baker-era Doctor Who serial, one in which creepy monsters from another time and space were running amok in a forested English village, perhaps,
  • The opening selection in Isn't That...?, a multifaceted feature which could variously include a piece of music you know you've heard somewhere before; a subsequent star musician in an earlier act; or else a present or future celebrity popping up in a music promo.  It's the last-named of these today, and whilst I won't insult your intelligence by asking you to name them (they're instantly recognisable), it's worth considering what a coup it was for The Company She Keeps to enjoy the individual's artistry in a promo for what I'm certain was their debut single,
  • A two-song tribute to the recently departed reggae drumming legend Sly Dunbar.  The Ini Kamoze track included serves two purposes, really.  One, to remind people that Here Comes the Hotstepper was a very long way from all he was about; and two, to get me all nostalgic about the Scotsman's roots reggae show on Piccadilly Radio, World-A-Reggae having been one of his regular interstitial tracks year in, year out.

J xx


Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 06/03/2026).




DOCH DER COUNTDOWN LÄUFT


I WAS AN ARMCHAIR RAVER


GOODIER BEFORE WHILEY & LAMACQ


COMPILED BY CHET & BEE (AND SOMETIMES TIM)






IN LOVING MEMORY: Sly Dunbar


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Saturday, 28 February 2026

LIST 243 - 28/02/2026

Hello again,

First up, here's something for you TML nostalgia buffs.  With a few minutes of spare time last night, I revisited the very first List from almost exactly seventeen years ago, retested all of the links (most of them needed replacing, in truth), and gave the whole thing the same treatment as I apply to new Lists, nested videos and soforth.  All much easier to navigate than first time around, and if I do say so myself, the song choices mostly hold up even now.  Feel free to take a look, and a listen.  Have fun.

As regards this week's choices, two more features seeing the light of day for the first time today are A Session of Sorts and Bulletproof.  

The former is, I suppose, simply a neat way of sharing four songs not previously included on a List by the same artist or performer, stretching across the entirety of their careers wherever possible.  And on this, the twentieth year of a career determinedly forged on their terms and their alone, Lancaster's finest sweary, red wine-marinaded husband and wife DIY psychedelic punk combo The Lovely Eggs are as deserving candidates as any.  Long may they prosper.

Bulletproof may evoke thoughts of Pop Will Eat Itself among some of you, and yes, I expect the early-mid 1990s Oldham club night which gives this feature its name was equally inspired by that leave-your-brain-at-the-door stomp by Stourbridge's finest.  It's Senser, however, that get a run out this time, Eject still a towering example of the rap-rock crossover genre du jour.

Now a mere 33 years of age (and how old does that make me feel typing that), it's unarguably of its time, but what an invigorating, exciting time that was.

The aforementioned Lovely Eggs - spoiler alert - will make an appearance in the Favourite Song of the Year feature at some point before long, although I'll leave you to guess what year and what song.  It's a short trip back to 2023 for today's favourite, a meeting of active minds between Ben, son of entertainer Roy, and Matt Berry in full Bonzo's The Intro and the Outro mode.  

Playful, self-effacing (there's at least the acknowledgement that not everyone gets jazz, even if Berry then shoots them down in familiar fashion) and not overstaying its welcome, it's also just about the only thing you'll see on here this week ever to have found its way into a question on Radio 4's Counterpoint (on which my scores continue to increase gently - I'm still not going on it, though).

The simple act of gathering all of the material used or intended for use in this blog's original 2009-2018 run into one Google Doc recently has proven a useful exercise, not least in surfacing a slew of tracks I could have sworn I'd included before now but actually never had.  

Hence, at long last, Mary Bobbins by Gabrielles Wish, at least as much of a cult Manchester act as The Fall, if not more so, and with a not dissimilar (if generally less acrimonious) revolving door of members pivoting around founder and sole constant presence Robert Corless.  

The Rob's Records mid-1990s incarnation of the band represented here remains my firm favourite, a feverish, tense post-punk brew enriched by the sound effect treatments of then member David Peplow (the same David Peplow who lectures here in Sheffield these days?  I wonder...).  Within the confines of a small venue such as the Star & Garter in Manchester, where I saw them support Half Man Half Biscuit and Calvin Party, it made for an intense listening experience.  The almost pop stylings of over a decade and a half later, not so much.

Other things to enjoy this week include, but are absolutely not limited to:

  • Tracks from opposite ends of the career of the recently reactivated Would-Be-Goods, Jessica Griffins' singular Received Pronunciation delivery and ear for a tune both still present and correct decades on,
  • A splendid late single from Fosca, the post-Orlando vehicle from academic, diarist and flaneur Dickon Edwards and another act hitherto hideously underrepresented in this blog,
  • Форум, reckoned to be the first synthpop act in Russia.  I'd been in two minds as to whether to include them as a Eurotastic act, the desire to observe the pre-hostilities Eurovision interpretation of what comprises "Europe" wrestling with Russia's current exclusion from said contest.  Ultimately they're not appearing under that banner,
  • The same David Westlake as whose career misfortunes were referred to in the C86 book review I shared last week,
  • A small tribute to Ken Downie.

J xx


Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 27/02/2026).


FAVOURITE SONG OF THE YEAR: 2023


A SESSION OF SORTS: The Lovely Eggs

BULLETPROOF



A SESSION OF SORTS: The Lovely Eggs


THEN AND NOW: Would-Be-Goods



A SESSION OF SORTS: The Lovely Eggs

(NB Playback on Blogger disabled for this video - click on link to visit YouTube.  Apologies!)


IN LOVING MEMORY: Ken Downie

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Sunday, 22 February 2026

LIST 242 - 22/02/2026

Hello again,

As promised, part two of this weekend's double-header.  Monsieur, with these Blogger postings you're really spoiling us, as the Ferrero Rocher lady once nearly said.

Among the new and old fare on offer this time we have the first outing of the Straight In At... feature - or to be more accurate, its first outing on That Music List.

This is something salvaged from Twitter, my engagement with which is now at the barest of bare minimums for all of the same reasons that many of yours will be also.  Straight In At... was a feed I ran on there for a few years, wherein every new entry in the Official Singles Chart on the given date in a past year was surfaced and reviewed.  

For years in the 1950s and 1960s with not even one hand's worth of new entries per week, it wasn't a hugely time-intensive exercise.  For years in the late 1990s and early 2000s with as many as 35 new songs hitting the then top 100 each week (and invariably disappearing again right away), it absolutely was.

The volume of stuff to wade through wasn't an issue for me, however.  Instead, I found myself having to think of things to write about too many songs which, with the best will in the world, I really didn't like at all.  Some people are of course of a disposition to be able to do that without it becoming wearying, and for a living at that; but I gradually found it a less than satisfying, less than optimal use of my energies.  

That's by no means a whinge - these were the parameters I'd set myself, so I had no grounds for complaint.  I just had to go there to find out it wasn't for me.

The Straight In At Twitter feed thus died a quiet death around the end of 2022, at a time when my love for music wasn't all it should have been in any event, but even then I wasn't wholly prepared to walk away from it forever.  Hence Straight In At... That Music List style, with charting songs still included from today's date in history, but just not all of them.

Four selections from February 22nd 1981, then, and no more than four.  No sign of that week's highest new entry (19) from Status Quo, as it's not a favourite.  No Walking On Thin Ice by Yoko Ono (the next highest entry but way down in position number 50 - these were very different times), as, love it as I do, it's been on at least one List already and I found other things I'd rather include for the first time.

Instead, plucked from the lowest fifth of the then top 75 we have a still just about pre-mainstream crossover Human League; an also still just about pre-mainstream crossover Classix Nouveaux; Yorkshire-born and raised Euro disco gentleman Geoffrey Bastow (appearing here under his K.I.D. alias); and finally the commercial highpoint in the career of Landscape, one which underlines as much as anything else how broad a church 1981 was in terms of what could become a hit.  It's my favourite year for chart music on that basis, an opinion which has only firmed up over time.

Six years further on from 1981 finds Hebden Bridge's finest export Bogshed in typically idiosyncratic form, and their inclusion gives me all the excuse required to include a link to a review I originally penned on Facebook two years ago of Whatever Happened to the C86 Kids?, Nige Tassell's exhaustive quest to find and interview at least one member of all 22 acts - of which Bogshed were of course one - featured on the NME's eponymous compilation cassette.  

It's an impressive, accessible piece of work, as well as at times poignant, considering the fates to have befallen some players in the piece in the four decades since C86 was released.  It's possibly not giving too much away to confirm that the quest would likely fail if commenced only in 2026.

From West Yorkshire past to West Yorkshire present, it's a pleasure to be able to include some Craven Faults for the first time here.  It can be assumed that this (by design) anonymous producer of compelling, pictorial, sometimes darkly ambient electronic music would have been as regular a fixture as any had TML not gone on its extended hiatus, given new album Sidings, from which today's selection is taken, is already an eighth in six years.

I'll eat my own arm if I haven't found a way to include some of their more extended pieces in my The Long Goodbye feature before this year's through.  Today, however, that honour goes to some classic Kraftwerk - as if there's any other kind.

From Germany to France, and the first appearance of Fabriqué en France, another new feature which showcases French and Francophone pop.  I have a correspondence a couple of years ago with the very fine Leeds indiepopper Owen Radford-Lloyd (formerly known as The French Defence) to thank for tuning me into Mylene Farmer's very early output - I'd only really picked up on her from a certain early 1990s monster European hit onwards.

The more I've explored Mylene, the more it's occurred to me how the likes of Florence Welch and Alison Goldfrapp owe at least as much to her as they do other more often cited touchstones such as Kate Bush and Noosha Fox. See what you think.

Please also feel free to enjoy the wholly unexpected return of Sugar after 32 years; a 1987-88ish cut from celebrated Zimbabwean Chigiyo pioneers Zig Zag Band; an early single of the year contender for me from Mitski; a reminder of the pristine pop wonderment of La Casa Azul, whose 2009 set is still talked about in revered tones by us Indietracks stalwarts; an example, for those not yet aware, of why Knitting Circle are one of the most vital, important acts in DIY/punk/indiepop right now (with an album very recently recorded and to follow); and a wee tribute to Jimmy Cliff.  

Actually, please feel free to enjoy it all.

J xx


Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 18/02/2026).




FABRIQUÉ EN FRANCE

THEN AND NOW: Sugar


IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE


STRAIGHT IN AT… February 22nd, 1981

(Bandcamp link - no video)


STRAIGHT IN AT... February 22nd, 1981





IN LOVING MEMORY: Jimmy Cliff

THE LONG GOODBYE


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